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The disciples return now and find Jesus speaking with the woman, but their marveling that Jesus is speaking with her seems to pale in comparison with the depth and beauty of the encounter we have just witnessed. The woman seems not to care either, so inflamed is her heart now with the warmth and light of this newfound discovery of love. She departs and returns to the village, unable to contain her joy at finding the One long-desired Beloved of her heart, and seeking to share it with her people, yes, even with those from whom she was once estranged and rejected. And perhaps even more amazing than the woman’s coming to faith is that the people of her village also come to believe (though that is getting ahead of ourselves in the text). As the Gospel tells us, “So the woman left her water jar, and went away into the city, and said to the people, ‘Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?’ They went out of the city and were coming to him.”
The woman leaves behind her water jar. She leaves behind, in a spontaneous forgetfulness and not in some ascetical program of renunciation, the old fears and preoccupations which bound and enslaved her, so enraptured is she by the beauty and the love of Christ. She is inflamed now with the joy of belovedness, of having being seen by the gaze of love even in her deepest, most hidden, and most shameful place, and by this gaze drawn back into the light of cherishing and communion. And in this same fire she goes out to others, to spread the flames to as many as she can reach, that they may share in her joy, that they may know, in themselves, the same love that has first touched her. And while the fields outside of the village are filled with those who at the woman’s witness are drawing near to Jesus, we encounter a dialogue between Jesus and his disciples. They urge him to eat the food that they have brought, but he says to them, “I have food to eat of which you do not know.” And when they misunderstand him and think someone has brought him physical food, he clarifies by saying, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me, and to accomplish his work.” And immediately, looking up at the fields and seeing the Samaritan people drawing near to him, he says, Do you not say, “There are yet four months, then comes the harvest?” I tell you, lift up your eyes, and see how the fields are already white for harvest. He who reaps receives wages, and gathers fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. For here the saying holds true, “One sows and another reaps.” I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor; others have labored, and you have entered into their labor. (4:35-38) And the ending of the passage is incredibly beautiful and moving precisely in its succinctness and simplicity: Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me all that I ever did.” So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them; and he stayed there two days. And many more believed because of his word. They said to the woman, “It is no longer because of your words that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is indeed the Savior of the world.” (4:39-42) Yes, the true food of Jesus Christ is the salvation of humanity, for this is the Father’s will, the expression of his tender predilection for each one of us, a will which is “always and only the will of love and life for men and women and for all creatures.”i He brings to the fore before the gaze of his disciples, before each one of us, the beautiful and mysterious work of God that instills itself into the very tapestry of history, ever seeking the welfare and salvation of each person born of his love and by his love sustained. Even among those who seem to be estranged and cut off from his truth and his grace, God is lovingly at work, as we see here in the case of the Samaritan people. Whenever the truth of Jesus was revealed to them and the opportunity to welcome his saving love was offered to them, they accepted with enthusiasm and with joy. So too we should have confidence even today, two-thousand years later, that the message of Christ, that the presence of Christ at work in the world, can receive an enthusiastic response. Such things are not to be relegated to the past as exceptional graces of the early birth of the Church. No, even today we can live the same encounter and dialogue, can enter into the same unity, such that the Church can be a leaven of unity and peace in the world for all, in all cultural and religious traditions, and indeed that the full message of God’s saving love in Jesus, revealing our call to intimacy in the heart of the Trinity’s life, can resound in more and more hearts, giving birth to a new springtime of faith in the world and the evangelization of hearts and cultures in every nation of the world. **** NOTE **** i. Pope Leo XIV, “Address of the Holy Father to Representatives of Other Churches and Ecclesial Communities and Other Religions,” (19 May 2025). He had to pass through Samaria. So he came to a city of Samaria, called Sychar, near the field that Jacob gave to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there, and so Jesus, wearied as he was with his journey, sat down beside the well. It was about the sixth hour. There came a woman of Samaria to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” (4:4-7)
We come now to the beautiful and rich encounter between Jesus and a Samaritan woman at a well, an encounter that hearkens back to similar encounters in the Old Testament and yet introduces something radically new. Here we see condensed, as it were, so many strands of prophecy and hope, of longing and aspiration, that are woven throughout the history of God’s people: for now God himself has come in the flesh to reveal his loving heart to his precious and chosen bride. In returning from Galilee to Judea, the Scripture tells us, Jesus has to pass through Samaria. And yet this “must” is not a strict necessity, as due to the animosity between the Jews and Samaritans the custom was for the former to pass around the land of Samaria rather than through it. Yet the must here for Jesus is of a nature far deeper and more profound; he is driven, as he will soon say, by the will of his Father, which is his true food, and the true freedom found only in love (4:34). And so Jesus, wearied as he is by his journey, sits down beside a well at midday, while his disciples go into town to purchase food. What better place to rest given the circumstances, for surely no one in their right mind shall come in the hottest part of the day to draw water? Jesus can expect to be left alone until his disciples return. No, but that is not his intention at all. Rather, he has come to this well not to restore his fatigue, nor sent his disciples into town to satisfy his hunger, but rather he has come here, he has sent his disciples away, all to satisfy his thirst. This is the thirst of the spirit, the thirst of the heart of God, just as the Father’s will is the sustenance of the Son and his true nourishment. For a woman comes in the heat of the day to draw water, something which itself should be an immediate indication of her status in the community. And seeing her, Jesus says to her, “Give me a drink.” But such an action, such a request, is breaking custom so deeply that the woman’s response comes as no surprise: “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?”And the Evangelist himself explains for those who might not know: “For the Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.” Jesus breaks down these barriers, he crosses over the boundaries that men’s pettiness and prejudice have erected, in order to encounter this woman, to encounter her and enter into dialogue with her, thus drawing her into the unity for which she has been made and for which she thirsts. Encounter. Dialogue. Unity. Is this not the way of the Church, the path of the leaven of communion that she is meant to be in the world and the true way of evangelization by which the Word of God may reach all hearts with its healing and consoling truth? Let us look at this encounter and follow the trajectory of this dialogue, that we may see how Jesus walks with this woman into the heart of her thirst, and through thirst into unity, and ultimately through this brings new life and communion to all the people of her town. In response to the woman’s affronted response asking why he transgresses the status quo of division and hate, Jesus says, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” The woman, however, understands these profound and spiritual words in a merely earthly sense, retorting, “Sir, you have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep; where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well, and drank from it himself, and his sons, and his cattle?” An unexpectedly pertinent question. Though she thinks only of earthly water, wondering why Jesus would speak as he does and how he would provide such water, her reference to Jacob opens up a platform for Jesus to lead her deeper in understanding. For he is greater than Jacob, immeasurably greater. For when Jacob came to the well, to this very well, he encountered Rachel, the one who would be his bride, and, as the Bible tells us: “Now when Jacob saw Rachel the daughter of Laban his mother’s brother, and the sheep of Laban his mother’s brother, Jacob went up and rolled the stone from the well’s mouth, and watered the flock of Laban his mother’s brother. Then Jacob kissed Rachel, and wept aloud” (Gen 29:10-11). He experienced the thirst of love, of the bridegroom, and for the sake of his future bride worked for fourteen years untiring: “and they seemed to him but a few days because of the love he had for her” (Gen 29:20). How beautifully Jesus is now fulfilling the essence of these words, lifting their meaning up beyond themselves and filling them with a new content, with the very essence of the Trinity’s infinite love and predilection which seeks out each and every one of his children to espouse them to himself.* “Every one who drinks of this water will thirst again,” Jesus replies, “but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst; the water that I shall give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” As we shall see more much later in the Gospel text, Jesus’ words indicate the awesome gift of the Holy Spirit: “‘He who believes in me, as the scripture has said, “Out of his heart shall flow rivers of living water.”’ Now this he said about the Spirit, which those who believed in him were to receive” (7:38-39a). And touched by his words but still not understanding their true purity and depth, the woman says, “Sir, give me this water, that I may not thirst, nor come here to draw.” And seeing the manner of her “coming here to draw,” we can understand the true pain and plight behind her words; she comes in shame and estrangement from her community, in the very heat of the day, to draw water. This act of continually seeking earthly water to sustain her life, thus, has also become a perpetual reminder of her shame and sin, her isolation from the community, and the anguished loss that her heart—like every human heart—bears. And this is precisely what Jesus now draws into the open when, in response to her plea, he says simply, “Go, call your husband, and come here.” “I have no husband,” she replies. And Jesus: “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband;’ for you have had five husbands, and he whom you now have is not your husband; this you said truly.” Here the text opens up in a beautiful and mysterious way on multiple levels. First of all we come to understand the roots of the woman’s pain and estrangement, the intricacies of her own tragic story of sin and infidelity. And yet at the same time we see that she comes to represent in her own person—to sum up, as it were—her own Samaritan people, and thus, in encountering Jesus, to bring them all back into dialogue and intimacy with God. For if this woman has had five husbands and lives now with a man who is not her husband, this is reflected in the wider history of her people, who when conquered by a foreign land began to worship their five gods in place of the one true God of Israel. (See 2 Kings 17.) And even now, turning back to the God of Israel, the Samaritans remained estranged and rejected by the Jews, yearning to return to the bosom of communion and yet separated by division, misunderstanding, and hate. Now we see even more clearly why Jesus had to pass through Samaria. For even though the vicissitudes of history had severed the Samaritans from the unity of Israel, he desires to incorporate them into the fullness of unity he came to establish, to welcome them into the most intimate and universal communion made possible only in his embrace. He came to espouse them to himself as a Bride to her Bridegroom, to make them members of his one Body. In telling the woman to call her husband, Jesus really intended to bring out into the open the true nature of her thirst, not carnal alone but spiritual, the nuptial thirst for union with God that lives buried inside each one of us, and to offer himself to her as the true fulfillment of this thirst: the one and only Bridegroom of her heart. This is what Jesus leads her to through the dialogue as it progresses: first she says that she recognizes him as a prophet who has gazed into the hidden depths of her heart, and she asks him about worship. In other words, she intuits the truth he referred to in speaking of her husbands: it is a matter of true worship, of communion with God. “Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet,” she says. “Our fathers worshiped on this mountain; and you say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship.” And Jesus says to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for such the Father seeks to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” To worship is to drink, and to drink is to worship, for the true adoration and praise that God desires from the human heart is that it accepts the full outpouring of his love and tenderness, that it drinks deeply from his loving heart. And the woman, encountering this torrent of love and tenderness in the heart of Jesus, asks him about the Christ, the Messiah, who is promised to come and “will show us everything.” And this allows Jesus to lead her the final step to the definitive encounter and acceptance for which his heart thirsts, and for which hers does as well: “I who speak to you am he.” At this point she is ready to accept him, to believe with all of her heart that the One who gazed deep, and with such inconceivable love, into the depths of her heart, is truly the Savior, truly the one Bridegroom-God who has come to espouse his people to himself as a single and indivisible Bride. **** NOTE **** *It is significant that Moses, too, first met his wife at a well (Ex 2:15-21), and Isaac’s wife is also encountered at a well (Gen 24:10-53). Clearly Jesus is stepping into this Biblical tradition and carrying it to its fulfillment. Let us not reject such awesome and precious love as we reflected upon in the last reflection. We have seen that such love is never far away, nor rationed according to any measure, however generous. It is total and unconditional, and shall never cease to seek us out to save, to heal, and to divinize. But that is precisely a profound sorrow that is also revealed by the text currently under consideration! “No one receives his testimony.” Though we can no longer affirm this in its absolute sense, and can be grateful for the many thousands of little souls throughout the world who live with a vibrant and heartfelt faith in Christ as the gift of God to us, the lament still stands: there are so many who, for one reason or another, refuse the gift of love that God desires to give us!
And when such an ardent and burning torrent of tenderness and love is rejected, this Love that is the very foundation of our being and of the existence of all things, such a rejection cannot but be the rejection of the very sources of one’s own well-being and happiness. It is an inclination of one’s being, as Saint Augustine said, from the fullness of being toward nothingness. And thus it is “wrath.” The fire of Love that brings warmth and light, peace and joy, everlasting bliss and happiness in the sweetest embrace of intimacy, when it is rejected, instead is experienced as the fire that burns and convicts, the fire that, since it is neither desired nor received, hurts the heart that, no matter how hard it tries, cannot forget about it nor escape from it. God will not force himself upon a heart that does not desire him (though in truth all hearts desire him); he will not barge in where he is not accepted, nor force a will that sets itself in opposition to him. But he will not cease to love and to care even for such a wayward heart, though this love becomes “wrath,” that is, the love that sets itself in opposition to all that the sinful heart clings to in place of God, thus debasing itself and bringing about its own destruction. It is not unlike the anger of a loving parent who sees their beloved child being destroyed by addiction to drugs; it is not the child who is condemned or hated—rather they are only ever cherished or loved—but the ardent love of the parent becomes as a consuming fire that seeks to set free the beloved heart that it may be what it was always meant to be, and find the freedom for which it was made. As Pope Francis wrote: Another reality having to do with eternal life is God’s judgement, both at the end of our individual lives and at the end of history. Artists have often attempted to portray it – here we can think of Michelangelo’s magnum opus in the Sistine Chapel – in accordance with the theological vision of their times and with the aim of inspiring a sense of awe in the viewer. We should indeed prepare ourselves consciously and soberly for the moment when our lives will be judged, but we must always do this from the standpoint of hope, the theological virtue that sustains our lives and shields them from groundless fear. The judgement of God, who is love (cf. 1 Jn 4:8.16), will surely be based on love, and in particular on all that we have done or failed to do with regard to those in need, in whose midst Christ, the Judge himself, is present (cf. Mt 25:31-46). Clearly, then, we are speaking of a judgement unlike any handed down by human, earthly tribunals; it should be understood as a rapport of truth with the God who is love and with oneself, within the unfathomable mystery of divine mercy. Sacred Scripture states: “You have taught your people that the righteous must be kind, and you have filled your children with good hope, because you give repentance for sins, so that… when we are judged, we may expect mercy” ( Wis 12:19.22). In the words of Benedict XVI: “At the moment of judgement we experience and we absorb the overwhelming power of his love over all the evil in the world and in ourselves. The pain of love becomes our salvation and our joy”. Such is the beauty of the true “wrath of God” of which the Bible speaks, an imperfect and anthropomorphic image certainly, but one which we cannot set aside, since it illumines an aspect of the love of God that is true and that must be understood by us. For a love that does not set itself in opposition to evil, a love that is not willing to fight to set free the beloved from all that does them harm, is no love at all. Neither is love true love if it is not willing to respect the freedom of the beloved even if they persist to the very end in rejecting love’s advances. It shall remain always love, always infinite tenderness and predilection, the kindness that knows no limit and no end, and yet when a heart has rejected such love, what consolation can it receive from this until it has turned from its evil ways, that it might live again? Oh, the consolation of being loved even in the depths of one’s sin and rejection is precisely that which can lead such a heart back to God anew, certain that even in their self-condemnation they have never been condemned by God, but only loved and sought out. It is their own sin that has brought condemnation upon them; but it is also their own act of self-condemnation, the greatest of all tragedies, from which God’s infinite love desires to deliver them. Let us turn ourselves to God anew, with ardent trust and longing, letting him free us of all that keeps us from him and from our own fulfillment in his embrace. And let us humbly pray and intercede for all of our brothers and sisters who still sit in darkness and the shadow of death, that they may turn to the light of love and, basking in its gentle rays, may find freedom, healing, and life unending, life in abundance in the joyful communion of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit for which each one of us has been created and in which alone we shall find true rest. He who comes from above is above all; he who is of the earth belongs to the earth, and of the earth he speaks; he who comes from heaven is above all. He bears witness to what he has seen and heard, yet no one receives his testimony; he who receives his testimony sets his seal to this, that God is true. For he whom God has sent utters the words of God, for it is not by measure that he gives the Spirit; the Father loves the Son, and has given all things into his hand. He who believes in the Son has eternal life; he who does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God rests upon him. (3:21-26)
Following upon the words of the Baptist upon which we have just meditated, we have what is most likely an interjection by the Evangelist himself summarizing the themes brought to the forefront thus far in his Gospel. In a profound and subtle way these words tie together the mystery that we witnessed in the Prologue of the Gospel about the Word becoming flesh with the recent words of John the Baptist about his own prophetic witness to Christ. We saw that “no one can receive anything except what is given to him from heaven,” and that no man can witness to God’s truth and love unless he has first yielded his life up to God and received this love and truth himself in the most intimate and personal spaces of his own heart. And yet in the case of Jesus, the Word made flesh, there is even more at work; for he is not a mere human being who has yielded his life up to God, who has been touched and chosen and sent on mission by God. No, he is immeasurably more. He alone is the One “who comes from above” and thus is “above all.” Of Jesus Christ alone, therefore, can it be said in the fullest sense that “he bears witness to what he has seen and heard.” For he speaks from the inmost heart of his own intimacy with the heavenly Father, he speaks with the heart of the only-begotten Son, who alone is with the Father for all eternity in the heart of the Trinity in the single kiss of the Holy Spirit. And when the Son takes flesh to himself and becomes man in the midst of time, his entire self is given, the whole fullness of divinity comes to dwell within the humanity of Christ: “in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily” (Col 2:9). Yes, for it is not by measure that God gives the Spirit; he does not ration the gift of his Spirit, but pours him out fully and completely both into the incarnate humanity of the only Son and also into the hearts of those who allow themselves to be grafted into him and to become his witnesses and his vessels in the world. “The Father loves the Son and has given all things into his hand,” we read, and thus when the Son, the One from heaven, speaks, we hear not the word of man but the word of God. And when we receive Christ in faith it is the fullness of God whom we receive, “setting our seal” to the fact that God is true, that the gift given in Jesus is utterly trustworthy because utterly given. For if the Father loves the Son and has given him everything, so too does the Son love us—so too does the Father love us with and in the Son—and give us everything, channeling the love received from the heart of the Father through the heart of the Son, in the one Spirit, and into us. This is the marvel of grace that comes to us in the gift of redemption, in our adoption into the intimacy of the family of the Trinity, in our divinization to become participants in the very life of God himself. It would benefit us to reflect deeply upon these words and to allow them to filter into our own hearts and lives: “God does not ration his gift of the Spirit.” Do I believe that God withholds himself from me, that he gives only a little bit of his love and attention, a modicum of his care, a part of his heart? If a part of me believes this, even a little part of me, then that part is in desperate need of light and evangelization (and is this not true of all of us?). God is infinitely more generous than we can imagine even in our wildest hopes and dreams. He loves us with far more ardor, tenderness, and attunement than we could ever conceive based on our own humanity, for he loves us not in a human measure, not in a created measure, but according to the very infinity of his own boundless Love and Goodness. But how often we pre-judge him according to our own pettiness, according to our fears and faltering expectations, blaming him for loving us poorly or accusing him of not being there when we need him. We can often feel safer in the presence of man than we do in the presence of God, but this does not reveal anything about God as rather about our own lack of knowledge of his goodness and lack of trust in his love. If we truly knew the height and breadth and depth of the love of God that is given to us without reserve, within us would be born a boldness of confidence and a serenity of trust that nothing could shake. For when placed side by side with the infinite Love of God, the whole of creation is less than a drop of water in a shoreless ocean. And this Love is directed upon each one of us—upon me, upon you—as if we are the only one, with such fullness of presence, with such tenderness of attention, that never for a moment are we far from God, even in the depths of our misery and sin. He has given all, and this gift shall never be lessened or removed, no matter what we may do or how much we may doubt. He is Love: Love in the everlasting intimacy of the three divine Persons of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and he is Love pouring itself out for me and into me at every moment, that I may be saved and redeemed and drawn to share forever in the joy and happiness of his own life. The custodianship of love is such a beautiful thing. The profound sense of service before the mystery of the Word incarnate, inflaming the heart with longing that the Bridegroom and his chosen Bride may be united and delight fully in their union. It is this ardent longing, this passionate thirst, that allows one to joyfully exclaim as did John the Baptist: “Therefore this joy of mine is now complete. He must increase but I must decrease.” Or as the same mystery is expressed in the first letter of John:
That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life—the life was made manifest, and we saw it, and testify to it, and proclaim to you the eternal life which was with the Father and was made manifest to us—that which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you may have communion with us; and our communion is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. And we are writing this that our joy may be complete. (1 Jn 1:1-4) This is not some falsely altruistic self-effacement, as if one understood oneself merely as a tool at the service of God for the well-being of others to the neglect of one’s own happiness and fulfillment. As the text itself says: not merely your joy may be complete, nor merely my joy may be complete, but rather our joy, the joy that exists precisely in communion shared in the love of God and the intimacy of the Trinity. Indeed, truly altruistic love, authentically tenderhearted and sacrificial attentiveness to the Word who comes from God, to the divine Bridegroom, and to each person who is the beloved and chosen of his heart—such love can only be born in a heart that first knows itself to be beloved of God, chosen and cherished. That is the paradox: the more bridal a heart becomes, the more it also becomes a friend of the Bridegroom to prepare his way into the hearts of others. We see this written into the beautiful language of the poem of the Song of Songs as well, in which the longing of the Bride for her Beloved also sweeps up in its enthusiasm all those around her: Let him kiss me with the kiss of his mouth! For your love surpasses wine, and your anointing oils are fragrant; yes, your Name is oil poured out, therefore do the virgins love you. Ah, draw me after you; let us make haste! The King has brought me into his chambers. We will exult and rejoice in you; we will extol your love beyond wine; how rightly do they love you! (Sg 1:2-4) For who can understand the depth of longing in the heart of the Bridegroom but the one who has experienced first-hand his love and his predilection? And who can understand the painful yet joyful thirst of the bride but the one who has allowed their own nuptial longing to be awakened and to express itself to the full? If our contemporary world which in large measure has forgotten God and written him off as irrelevant, which has caricatured the radical newness of the Gospel as an empty religion of mere rituals, rules, and regulations, and which sees faith as nothing but well-wishing or superstition—if this very world is to be evangelized and to come to know the true face of God once again, this can only be done through the reawakening of longing: the eros at the throbbing heart of Biblical revelation. Only when we know the true heart of God toward us, a heart aflame with tender longing and ardent care, can we know also who he desires us to be for him; and only when we allow our own thirst for God to be felt and to grow within us, stirring us to seek him at every moment as the only true fulfillment of our being, can we be sensitive enough to also know the breadth and depth of his own thirst for us. In other words, his thirst awakens ours and our thirst, growing at the touch of his thirst, enables us to know his thirst yet more deeply still. And this meeting of thirsts bursts open our hearts to see in every person near and far the capacity for the same encounter, the need for the same union, the incipient beginnings of the same thirst, and same love that stirs the heart of the Trinity to seek them out so deeply and fully that his pursuit of them is unique and irreplaceable, as if they are the only person whom he has ever made, the one beloved of his heart for whom he gives everything, that they may know the joy and fulfillment for which they were made. Pope Leo XIV, in his homily for the inaugural Mass for his pontificate, in which he formally stepped into the role of successor of Saint Peter and shepherd who presides in the primacy of love and service over the universal Body of Christ, expressed precisely this: We see this in today’s Gospel, which takes us to the Sea of Galilee, where Jesus began the mission he received from the Father: to be a “fisher” of humanity in order to draw it up from the waters of evil and death. Walking along the shore, he had called Peter and the other first disciples to be, like him, “fishers of men”. Now, after the resurrection, it is up to them to carry on this mission, to cast their nets again and again, to bring the hope of the Gospel into the “waters” of the world, to sail the seas of life so that all may experience God’s embrace. How can Peter carry out this task? The Gospel tells us that it is possible only because his own life was touched by the infinite and unconditional love of God, even in the hour of his failure and denial. For this reason, when Jesus addresses Peter, the Gospel uses the Greek verb agapáo, which refers to the love that God has for us, to the offering of himself without reserve and without calculation. Whereas the verb used in Peter’s response describes the love of friendship that we have for one another. Consequently, when Jesus asks Peter, “Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?” (Jn 21:16), he is referring to the love of the Father. It is as if Jesus said to him, “Only if you have known and experienced this love of God, which never fails, will you be able to feed my lambs. Only in the love of God the Father will you be able to love your brothers and sisters with that same ‘more’, that is, by offering your life for your brothers and sisters.” Peter is thus entrusted with the task of “loving more” and giving his life for the flock. The ministry of Peter is distinguished precisely by this self-sacrificing love, because the Church of Rome presides in charity and its true authority is the charity of Christ. It is never a question of capturing others by force, by religious propaganda or by means of power. Instead, it is always and only a question of loving as Jesus did. The Apostle Peter himself tells us that Jesus “is the stone that was rejected by you, the builders, and has become the cornerstone” (Acts 4:11). Moreover, if the rock is Christ, Peter must shepherd the flock without ever yielding to the temptation to be an autocrat, lording it over those entrusted to him (cf. 1 Pet 5:3). On the contrary, he is called to serve the faith of his brothers and sisters, and to walk alongside them, for all of us are “living stones” (1 Pet 2:5), called through our baptism to build God’s house in fraternal communion, in the harmony of the Spirit, in the coexistence of diversity. In the words of Saint Augustine: “The Church consists of all those who are in harmony with their brothers and sisters and who love their neighbour” (Serm. 359,9). Brothers and sisters, I would like that our first great desire be for a united Church, a sign of unity and communion, which becomes a leaven for a reconciled world. In this our time, we still see too much discord, too many wounds caused by hatred, violence, prejudice, the fear of difference, and an economic paradigm that exploits the Earth’s resources and marginalises the poorest. For our part, we want to be a small leaven of unity, communion and fraternity within the world. We want to say to the world, with humility and joy: Look to Christ! Come closer to him! Welcome his word that enlightens and consoles! Listen to his offer of love and become his one family: in the one Christ, we are one. The office of Peter is a ministry of unity, just as the essence of the Church in the world is to be the leaven of universal reconciliation in the likeness of the Trinity, where in the experience of God’s love we are introduced again into the communion for which we were made: unity with God and unity with our brothers and sisters. As Pope Leo XIV said elsewhere: the Church is “the communion of believers, enlivened by the Holy Spirit, who enables us to enter into the perfect communion and harmony of the blessed Trinity. Indeed, it is in the Trinity that all things find their unity.”i In order to be of service to this love and this unity, the thing of paramount importance is first of all to be its recipient, to let our hearts be plunged into the very center of God’s loving predilection. It is to experience the tenderness of his gaze and the sweetness of his cherishing, the depths of his undying mercy in all of our poverty, misery, sinfulness, and need, and to let his thirst for us become the driving force behind our own thirst for him, and also the fire ever enkindled within us to give ourselves totally for the salvation of our brothers and sisters, so they may know the unity and joy of God for which we have all been made. **** NOTE **** i. Address of the Holy Father to Pontifical Mission Societies, 22 May 2025. He who has the bride is the bridegroom; the friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly at the bridegroom’s voice; therefore this joy of mine is now full. He must increase, but I must decrease. (3:28-30)
Drawing on the marriage celebration customs of his people, John the Baptist responds to his disciples’ question of whether it is appropriate that people leave him to follow instead in the footsteps of Jesus by placing himself in the position of the “bridegroom’s friend,” in contemporary language, the “best man.” It was the latter’s joy and duty to prepare the bride to receive her groom when, during the joyful procession at the height of the marriage celebration, he came to the dwelling of the bride to receive her and take her unto himself, to bring her back with him to his own house, to the house he had prepared for her, that there they might share life together always. John thus reveals how deeply and intimately he understands the nature of his role, and how joyfully he embraces it. And his words also illustrate for us beautifully, better perhaps than most others, the nature of God’s salvation and his desire for us: a desire that is intimate and ardent, tender and nuptial. This desire is expressed profoundly and beautifully by Jesus himself, in words quite similar, at the last supper, when he says: “In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And when I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also” (14:2-3). With the reference to Jesus as the Bridegroom we touch again the heart of biblical revelation. From the first pages of Genesis to the final verses of the book of Revelation, we witness the unfolding of God’s loving plan to unite us to himself as a bride with her Bridegroom, a beloved with her Lover. The nuptial image is used often in Scripture to illustrate the nature of God’s love for his people, for each one of us. And while no earthly image is adequate to truly capture the depth and ardor of God’s love, and every true form of love and relationship in this world takes its origin from God and also in God exists in its super-eminent fullness, it is true that God has designed the nuptial love to offer a particularly full and vivid imaging of his own love. When we use the word “nuptial” we think of the marriage relationship, of its sharing of daily life and home, and of its physical consummation and bringing forth of children. And this is all true and beautiful. We also tend to think of this relationship in terms of the romantic attraction that leads up to it and, though transformed in a beautiful way, that blossoms in its truest meaning only within it, when it is made sober and strong after years of authentic love, listening, and service. And if we understand romantic attraction aright—and not along the lines of the thousand different aberrations that our world presents to us which are in fact not essential to romance at all—then this imaging also is true and beautiful. For God loves us not merely as one would love one’s neighbor, nor as anonymous citizens or servants, nor indeed even merely as a parent loves their children, nor even merely in a love of friendship understood in the superficial sense (as standing side-by-side doing things we enjoy together), nor even in a spousal, nuptial love according to earthly measure. Rather, he loves us in a love before which the longings for intimacy and the lifelong devotion of spousal love and marriage pale in comparison, and before which the security and intimacy of friendship, and the sharing of being and life of family also falter and grow dim. Here stands true what Saint Paul said in another context: “For if there was splendor in the dispensation of condemnation, the dispensation of righteousness must far exceed it in splendor. Indeed, in this case, what once had splendor has come to have no splendor at all, because of the splendor that surpasses it. For if what faded away came with splendor, what is permanent must have much more splendor” (2 Cor 3:9-11). In the text we are considering, John bears witness to the Son, the Messiah, and speaks of him as the Bridegroom, and of his own humble service as that of the Bridegroom’s “friend.” He finds his joy in facilitating the meeting between Bridegroom and bride, between God-in-the-flesh and the persons whom he has come to save and to unite to himself. It is this encounter and its fulfillment that allows John’s joy to “be complete.” Jesus himself, in the passage from the last supper quoted above, also speaks out of the abundance of his own beloved heart, using marital imagery, and tells of us his great joy and desire to prepare a place for us in heaven, in his Father’s house, so that as a bride joined to her bridegroom, we might share eternally in the life that is his. While considering that the marriage image falls short, we can nonetheless affirm that it sets us on the journey; it gets us moving in the right direction, revealing true things about God’s love and desire for us and opening up the space for us to experience them directly, in our own life and experience, without any image or analogy needed to supplement them. John bears witness to the Son who is also Bridegroom, who from the security and abundance of his sonship, of his being Beloved, also inclines toward humanity his bride—toward each one of us—as the true Lover, seeking to espouse us to himself and to grant us, in his own embrace, access into the very innermost heart of God, that we might repose with him in the bosom of his Abba and breathe with him the delightful breath of the Holy Spirit. In other words, all earthly home-making, all human becoming-one, all the intimacy and belonging and ardent care and humble service and expansive fruitfulness of this world springs from the Trinity and directs our hearts back to the Trinity. Indeed it all finds its own true fulfillment and consummation only in the heart of the Trinity’s own embrace, in which everything good that exists in this world is lifted up into its Origin and Fullness in the eternal intimacy of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Our prior reflection on the intimate relationship between silence, word, and body ties in beautifully with, and is in turn illumined by, a pertinent reflection by G.K. Chesterton. I would like to quote part of it here and to spend a short moment bringing to the fore the beauty and importance of what it expresses. He writes:
Whenever you hear much of things being unutterable and indefinable and impalpable and unnamable and subtly indescribable, then elevate your aristocratic nose towards heaven and snuff up the smell of decay. It is perfectly true that there is something in all good things that is beyond all speech or figure of speech. But it is also true that there is in all good things a perpetual desire for expression and concrete embodiment; and though the attempt to embody it is always inadequate, the attempt is always made. If the idea does not seek to be the word, the chances are that it is an evil idea. If the word is not made flesh it is a bad word. Thus Giotto or Fra Angelico would have at once admitted theologically that God was too good to be painted; but they would always try to paint Him. And they felt (very rightly) that representing Him as a rather quaint old man with a gold crown and a white beard, like a king of the elves, was less profane than resisting the sacred impulse to express Him in some way. That is why the Christian world is full of gaudy pictures and twisted statues which seem, to many refined persons, more blasphemous than the secret volumes of an atheist. The trend of good is always towards Incarnation. But, on the other hand, those refined thinkers who worship the Devil, whether in the swamps of Jamaica or the salons of Paris, always insist upon the shapelessness, the wordlessness, the unutterable character of the abomination. They call him “horror of emptiness,” as did the black witch in Stevenson's Dynamiter; they worship him as the unspeakable name; as the unbearable silence. They think of him as the void in the heart of the whirlwind; the cloud on the brain of the maniac; the toppling turrets of vertigo or the endless corridors of nightmare. It was the Christians who gave the Devil a grotesque and energetic outline, with sharp horns and spiked tail. It was the saints who drew Satan as comic and even lively. The Satanists never drew him at all. And as it is with moral good and evil, so it is also with mental clarity and mental confusion. There is one very valid test by which we may separate genuine, if perverse and unbalanced, originality and revolt from mere impudent innovation and bluff. The man who really thinks he has an idea will always try to explain that idea. The charlatan who has no idea will always confine himself to explaining that it is much too subtle to be explained. (A Miscellany of Men, “The Mystagogue”) There is much richness hidden in these few words, but I would like to focus on two simple phrases which express the essence of the point: first, “there is in all good things a perpetual desire for expression and concrete embodiment,” and second, “the trend of good is always towards Incarnation.” They express basically the same thing, and reveal in a beautiful way even more deeply the why behind the Incarnation of the Son of God. If God is truly bonum diffusivum sui, the Good eternally pouring himself out in love, then it follows almost logically (though utterly freely) that this Good shall seek to become incarnate, to become enfleshed, visible, touchable, and relatable. It follows that the Word who is always with the Father in the bosom of the Trinity shall also become the Word among us, resounding throughout time and space and instilling himself into all that we are and experience. So too it is with each one of us: when we are authentically touched by the Holy Spirit, by the love and truth of God, this does not isolate us in the ivory tower of our own self-satisfaction, but rather becomes a fire within us driving us to communication and communion, to action and creativity. The Word spoken silently in our hearts, while in its full breadth and depth remaining inexpressible, beyond what we can limit to intellectual concepts or formulated words, nonetheless inflames us with the longing to give both voice and flesh to this very Word. How beautifully, then, we can understand the saying that the Church is the perpetuation of the Incarnation of Christ throughout time and space, the continuing presence of his Body, of his Word-made-flesh. He is present to us still in all that makes us his Church, in her teaching and life and prayer and sacrament, in her festivals and the wonder by which she lives, in the intimacy that lives at her very heart in which we are drawn into communion with the Trinity and into profound unity with one another. In the heart and body of the Church, in other words, Christ becomes flesh in us still, becomes flesh in the world. And in each one of us, too, Christ seeks to perpetuate his Incarnation, to give flesh to the mystery of God, and to give voice and expression to the unspeakable beauty of the life of the Trinity. And how humble and unassuming, how little and ordinary, are the workings of this Word! God does not hide himself in privileged places or in esoteric experiences, among the intellectual elite or the ascetically accomplished. Rather, he implants himself in every ordinary thing of our world, making it a sacrament of his presence and his love, and seeking only the openness of our hearts to recognize him there and to welcome his approach and his gift. He makes himself flesh for us at every moment, and he gives voice anew to his one Word without ceasing, speaking to us always in all the things that exist, in both the beauty and toil of life, in times of speech and times of silence, in the solitary prayer of the heart and in worship in community, in play and leisure and in daily work and responsibility, in the rising of the sun and its setting, in joy and sorrow, darkness and light. And in this making-flesh, in this giving-voice, the Word from God unites us to God, binds our hearts to the Trinity who loves us; and he also becomes the meeting place of all hearts by which we can truly encounter one another, enter into authentic dialogue, and experience the unity for which our hearts long. The words of John the Baptist that “no one can receive anything except what is given him from heaven” illustrate profoundly the nature of all true prophetic witness, all creativity and ministry, and indeed the wellsprings of human activity itself. This simple statement of John is in fact rich in implications, precisely in its simplicity and its absoluteness. No one—truly no one, in any circumstances—can receive anything—anything at all—except what is given to him from heaven—from God, from the heart of the Trinity’s own divine life communicating itself into the world. Reflecting upon these words and extrapolating from them to what they reveal about general, universal truths about reality itself, we can say that there are three interrelated dimensions of being expressed here: silence, word, and body.
What do I mean by this? I mean that there are three dimensions of life, the life of every man and every woman, that either stand together or fall together. They are so intimately interrelated that each conditions the others and only all three together create the completeness and unity, the richness and abundance of life, for which we were created. The three dimensions of this “trinitarian” union, as said above, are silence, word, and body. Let us summarize succinctly what is meant by these words in context, for they are being used here not in their ordinary banal sense, but in the light of their profound inner essence. Silence is understood as the atmosphere of presence: presence to God, to oneself, to others, and to the world in its most authentic meaning. It is the living stillness of mind and heart, the rich, patient activity of our integral humanity, that allows one to be truly alive in each moment, and in this to receive, to listen, and to understand. Silence is the primal state of man, of the human heart, because it is the primal state of God as Trinity, in the deep reciprocal receptivity of each of the divine Persons to one another. Silence is thus the space of reverence, of tenderness, and of love. It is the sanctuary of prayer and the playground of wonder and intimacy. And silence, thus understood, is not a mere absence of speech or a simple quietude (and thus exists also in speech and in sound), but rather the attuned presence of the heart to all that is, which excludes the prejudgments, the fast-paced pressures and performancism, the bloated self-focus, and the interior and exterior noise that deafen the heart to the silent voice of reality—of God—that sounds in everything. And thus we come to the essential point: silence is the atmosphere of the word, in which the word is truly welcomed and heard. Without silence one cannot perceive the word. Word is truth; word is meaning. Word is the inner essence of being communicating itself to me, giving itself to me. Word is richness and abundance, for without word nothing has meaning or purpose, and everything remains empty, vain, and ultimately absurd. Without word, life is mere appearance, mere experience, coming superficially and fading away just as quickly. It is mere “body” without soul, mere existing without life. The word is the savor of life, and this savor cannot be experienced and lived without the atmosphere of silence. Each one of us thirsts for the truth more than we thirst for bread, more, indeed, than we thirst for any of the experiences of life. Truth is our real sustenance, the nourishment of our souls and the ground upon which we stand, and also the space of our fulfillment and happiness. We find joy and consummation as persons only when united to the truth, living the truth, and experiencing it—the truth of the world as made and sustained by God, and ultimately the truth of God himself, not only as creator but as Trinity, in the innermost mystery of his own divine life, which is opened up to us as our own. And yet this contact with the truth in reverence, this reception of the word in silence—this word-filled-silence, this meaning-filled-presence—is not a merely mental exercise or a solely spiritual reality (if spiritual is understood as divorced from our bodies and from the concrete world in which we live). Rather, the word seeks to be made flesh. Meaning seeks to express itself in the body, in all the details and experiences of life. In fact, the word already lives there, but can only blossom freely from within, can only speak forth its meaning, when it is received with the receptivity of silence and in a heart attuned to the word. In this way, truly, the body too aspires to unseal its true meaning, to set free the word that it bears latent within it, that this word may become song. Coming full circle on the basis of these succinct reflections, we can affirm that all true work and creativity and fruitfulness are born from this womb of the silent word, and only thus can be its becoming-flesh. Mere superficial experience is not enough; neither, indeed, is relying upon our own insight, understanding, imagination, or creativity in what we do, whether that be in evangelization and ministry, in loving others, or in any of the forms of human creative endeavor. Here the words of John the Baptist issue their challenge and invitation to us: “No one can receive anything but what has been given from heaven;” speak not from yourself alone, but from God and for God; and in order to do this, first face to depths of your own poverty and descend into silent listening, that his word may resound in you, and that you may speak, act, and create only from this word. Only thus shall your activity be meaningful and fruitful, communicating not your own personal and private vision (however much people may praise and appreciate this), but truly the word of God entrusted to you. And in fact, true contact with this word in the silence, true contact with this word in the body, making every moment of life sacred and holy, inherently bears fruit near and far, like ripples spreading from a stone cast into water or echoes of sound from a song sounding so deep than it cannot be heard with mortal ears, but when it touches the heart it fills it with serene gladness and sober exultation, with abiding peace and joy. After this Jesus and his disciples went into the land of Judea; there he remained with them and baptized. John also was baptizing at Aenon near Salim, because there was much water there; and people came and were baptized. For John had not yet been put in prison. Now a discussion arose between John’s disciples and a Jew over purifying. And they came to John, and said to him, “Rabbi, he who was with you beyond the Jordan, to whom you bore witness, here he is, baptizing, and all are going to him.” John answered, “No one can receive anything except what is given him from heaven. You yourselves bear me witness, that I said, I am not the Christ, but I have been sent before him. He who has the bride is the bridegroom; the friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly at the bridegroom’s voice; therefore this joy of mine is now full. He must increase, but I must decrease.” (3:22-30)
Now we encounter a shift in the narrative, wherein Jesus and his disciples go into the Judean countryside and begin to baptize—though the Evangelist later makes clear that Jesus does not baptize but only his disciples. This seems to spark a debate between the disciples of John the Baptist, who is also baptizing, and a “Jew,” in other words one of the established leaders or self-styled teachers of the Israelite people. When John uses the term “Jew,” as he often does, he is not using it according to its contemporary sense as a universal designation for all the people of Israel, but rather for the authorities of the day who resisted the message and the person of Jesus, though in this there is also sad division that opens up between the old law, the old covenant, and the new, through hardness of heart to receive the gift of definitive salvation. Thus, however the tenor and import of his words or phrasing may have been misunderstood by certain people in the past, we must emphasize that John gives no place for Christians to embrace any form of anti-Semitism, however subtle. In fact such prejudiced and racist attitudes have no foundations in the Bible or in Christian revelation, but are a profound betrayal of their deepest truth. Christians, rather, are called upon to fight anti-Semitism, and every other form of dehumanization, wherever they find it. We can also recognize the particularly strong and intimate bond that unites us to our elder brothers and sisters in the faith, from whom and through whom we have received so much. After all, Saint Paul says of the Israelite people: “They are Israelites, and to them belong the sonship, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises; to them belong the patriarchs, and of their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ. God who is over all be blessed for ever. Amen” (Rom 9:4-5). But let us return to the text under consideration. We are not given to know the precise nature of the debate that occurs, but it seems to be about the nature of the baptism of Jesus’ disciples as opposed to the baptism of John the Baptist. For the latter’s disciples ask him about this. And John uses the question as an opportunity to remind them of the true nature of his own prophetic vocation, and to direct their hearts and lives along the true path which he was called only to prepare: in other words, he directs them to Christ, the true Bridegroom, whom it has been his privilege to announce. Here we have some beautiful and rich words. First of all, John says something of profound depth which merits prolonged reflection, not only of the mind but of the heart, of life, so that the truth of the words he here speaks may distill even into the spontaneous impulses and wellsprings of our inner being, and be expressed in our thoughts and actions. He says: “No one can receive anything except what is given him from heaven” (3:27). This is similar to what is said in the letter of James: “Every good endowment and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change” (Jas 1:17). We see something complementary in Saint Paul’s saying that: “What have you that you did not receive? If then you received it, why do you boast as if it were not a gift?” (1 Cor 4:7). The first and most basic meaning of all these texts is that God is the origin of every gift, and therefore we should not boast of our gifts as if we are somehow their origin, or as if they are somehow our possession. But the meaning goes deeper. When John says these words in response to his disciples, he is expressing a profound truth about the right attitude toward the very journey of life. It is as if John beholds in his interior vision the very foundation of all reality as the benevolent and loving gift of the Father of all. He sees that all things spring from the generous hands of God and that by this same generosity, this abundant and overflowing goodness, they are ceaselessly sustained. And this same gift constitutes the world in its innate goodness and beauty, and, as we have seen, sustains each one of us uniquely in being by the loving gaze of God that is ceaselessly directed upon us. He looks and he loves. He loves and he gives. And so we are. And this gift is so intimate, so immediately present at every moment of time and in every circumstance, that it becomes both our enduring consolation and strength—the foundation of love upon which we may live in security and peace at every moment, certain of the Trinity’s nearness and care—and also the guidance for our life, our desires, and our choices. For no one can receive anything unless it is given to him from God. In other words everything in my life, and my very life itself, comes to me at every moment as a gift of God’s love to me, a gift by which he cherishes and cares for me and also seeks to enter into a relationship of reciprocal love with me, so that, as I grow into intimacy with him, this gift may reach maturity and I may find the fulfillment and happiness for which I was made. This also means that it is not necessary to strive for what is not given, or to cast a side-glance upon others to see what gifts they have received and to compare them to my own. For if God is truly this immediately close to me in every moment, then he is present also at the heart of all my capacities and incapacities, all my desires and aspirations, all my experiences and encounters, all the good I encounter each day and also all the bad, weaving himself into all things to foster what is good and to protect from what is evil, drawing my heart along the journey of life to my true benefit and the benefit of all. He is speaking to me at every instant from the abundance of his love and the depth of his seeing, such that in opening myself to this loving gaze, to this voice of truth speaking of his ceaseless gift to me, I can discern the reality of his plans for me, of the path that he marks out for me in the unique beauty of this day, as in every day of my life. I can hear that beautiful word that he speaks into me, and I can embrace this word and let it become my song, the song that I sing with him in participation in the harmony and melody of the Trinity itself and as a hymn of benefit for all of my brothers and sisters, making the strains of love more audible in the world. How deeply we need the consolation of the Spirit once again! Our world is thirsting for this consolation, for the savor of truth, goodness, and beauty—yes, for the sweet taste of the loving presence of God cradling our hearts and infusing them with the joy of his own life. In fact the consolation of the Spirit is the true savor of all things, even natural earthly things, in the sense of being the only key that can unlock the final door to their deepest and most intrinsic beauty, to the true experience and affirmation of what they are in their authentic value.
As we saw in a previous reflection, however, in order to receive the impress of the Spirit’s gift and the echo of his voice within us, a spiritual sensitivity is necessary. And this spiritual sensitivity itself is the fruit of grace, and by the activity of grace within us it grows and matures. It is rooted in the theological virtues of faith, hope, and love and, from this root, spreads to transform and enliven all of our faculties, from our mind, affection, and will to all of our emotions and our very sense responses to the incarnate world. The Spirit gives life, and by grafting us into the very life of God he makes us capable of experiencing God, of entering into a true communion with God deeper than all communion we have henceforth known with other created persons or with the realities of this world. God is not, of course, experienced in the ordinary manner than we experience created things, for in his being his is transcended, of a different order than the realities to which we are accustomed. And yet he is not less real, less vibrant, but more so; he is the Being that we experience and come to know in all being, and he is the Goodness that we savor in all that is good; he is the Beauty seen in all beauty, and the Truth known in every truth. He is the Love that approaches us in every love and that summons us into a direct relationship with himself, into a reciprocal relation of personal intimacy in receptivity and gift. And this kind of real, living, and direct relation with God—which is the only one that can truly satisfy our hearts—as the partial, fragmented experiences of him in created things are not enough to fulfill us, only comes to full blossom by the living activity of the Holy Spirit within us, by our conformity to the Son, Jesus Christ, in his own intimacy with the Father. It comes about by our living participation in the manner of living and loving proper to the Trinity. And this life and love are so real and true that they can—and seek—to penetrate and permeate all aspects of human life in this world, however insignificant or mundane they may appear. Everything is precious and important to God, and his love can be revealed and manifest in all of it. But it is also true that not every human disposition is capable of receiving and experiencing, of assenting to and living, this love. This is the spiritual sensitivity that we spoke about previously. God is received, God makes himself present, to a heart that is attentive to him, that is capable of receiving him. And yet his own grace goes before to fashion within us this capacity. It draws us from our preoccupation with the periphery to a recollection in the center, from our blindness on the surface of impressions to a seeing deep in the beholding of the heart, from our deafness in a cacophony of superficial and fragmented voices to a spirit of silence and interiority, to a true dwelling within the sanctuary of our being from which we are authentically open both to the goodness of all things and to the approach of God himself. In other words, the Spirit fashions within us a true presence to God, a presence to God in the self, in others, in created reality, and in unmediated openness to God himself in his full, uncreated Being. And this presence to God enfolds and deepens all other forms of presence, just as these forms of presence are the natural substratum of our capacity for presence to God: namely presence to self, presence to others, and presence to the world. And we can recognize that all authentic presence, as all truth itself, is marked by three traits (there are more but only these shall be noted here): sobriety, simplicity, and succinctness. When a life, or a discourse, or a form of art or technology or communication, is marked by empty verbosity or an excessive demand on our time or attention, by a complexity that fragments us or our presence in countless pieces, by a lack of sobriety, that is, of self-possession and the slow, deliberate, and contemplative attention that sobriety manifests, then it manifests a perversion of presence or a distortion of truth, goodness, and beauty. Our contemporary technologies often all but destroy in us this ability for such presence, conditioning us instead to skim across the surface of things seeking for new sights and sounds, new feelings and experiences, new information. And to the degree that we allows this conditioning to take over us, we become incapable of the presence that reality requires, the presence that in its simplicity and sobriety finds in even the littlest of things profound wellsprings of meaning. In a single verse of the Bible, the truly “present” heart, the heart that has not been dulled by modern media or the contemporary paradigm of perpetual striving and achievement, can find hours and hours of food for thought, and springs of lasting savor and serenity. Indeed, even in things that are not adequately transparent and “centered,” the centered heart can penetrate through to the spiritual core and affirm what is authentic there, even while seeking the purification—the making sober, simple, and succinct—of the germ of goodness present there. But in order to conclude this reflection let us turn our gaze another direction. Or rather let us open our hearts to that more primary truth once again, in other words to how God himself approaches us and communicates himself to us both in the hidden depths of our hearts and in the concrete experiences of our life in this world. When we reflect upon the ways that the Spirit acts upon us and reveals to us, makes effective within us, the loving presence of the Father and the Son and their radiant truth, we recognize different shades of experience. At the risk of oversimplifying, we can say that God makes his presence known to us in light or in warmth, or in a combination of the two: in the light of insight in the mind, or in the warmth of consolation in the heart, though the two in fact flow into one another and almost always accompany each other to a greater or lesser degree. However, he also works within us more deeply, more hiddenly, than either insight or consolation, by doing things in the secret sanctuary of our heart that we neither see nor feel, though to do this freely he needs our permission, our prior acceptance, the unconditional “fiat” to his activity. We see these three different forms of experience and activity throughout all of even natural life, and the spiritual life manifests the same richness and the same simplicity: we can see with the mind or the vision of the heart without particular fervor, though when this vision is mature enough it shall beget fervor and affection is us as well; we can be moved affectively, emotionally, without understanding what it is that moves us, even as this experience of being moved sets us on a journey to understanding and indeed awakens already the beginnings of understanding; and finally there are many things that we undergo, that happen within us, and that we ourselves do or undergo which may not resonate fully in waking consciousness, which nonetheless are of great, even ultimate importance, even as they lie in mystery seen fully only by God himself. Indeed, this hidden activity of the Trinity in the depth of our being endures and unfolds in all circumstances, whether in joy or in sorrow, in consolation or in desolation, in ease or in difficulty, as the thread of meaning in God’s plan and his work that endures even where we might be tempted to see rupture. Yes, and as the activity of grace in us reaches maturity—as our humanity blossoms in maturity under the touch of grace—all three of these forms of his presence and activity flow into one, which is beyond feeling and awareness even if it can and does overflow into feeling and awareness: the synergy by which the Holy Spirit stirs me to think, feel, and act according to the life of Christ, such that Christ himself acts in and through me, inspiring me so to live as he desires, as he himself lives and loves. In this I am moved beyond even my own rational understanding and beyond even the external, created things that may move me to act: I act because God moves me to act, even if in this action he also works in and through the capacities, gifts, and knowledge of my own humanity, while also surpassing it or drawing it beyond itself to express and manifest what can only come from him, what comes from beyond my mere earthly circumstances or experiences as his gift of grace, as the inflow of his own presence in my life and in the world. Here all the sacramental forms of his presence in the incarnate world, here all his work in mind and feeling and experience, is gathered together and unified, made simple and transparent, through his own unmediated fullness in the core of my being, in the center of my spirit, where he moves me directly as the divine Persons of the Trinity themselves are moved. |
Joshua ElznerI am a humble disciple of Jesus Christ who seeks to live in prayerful intimacy with the Trinity and in loving service to all through a life devoted to prayer, compassion, and creativity. On this blog I will share the little fruits of my contemplation in the hopes of being of service to you on your own journey of faith. I hope that something I have written draws your heart closer to the One who loves you! Archives
February 2026
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